A regular Thursday scene in Hebden Bridge, but not previously depicted on the blog. The fish van is a welcome visitor – he’s having a quiet day here, there is usually a considerable queue. Mind you, it was chucking it down with rain this morning.
We are at the low time of the year: no light, and I’m largely working at home, recovering as best I can from the exertions of the last semester but not yet ready to call it Christmas. Not much to take pictures of then: except dimly-lit attempts to capture the atmosphere of my home town in one of my rare ventures outside.
Bloody hell, roll on the solstice – all the way into Manchester on the early morning cattle truck and it doesn’t even have the decency to be starting to get light by the time I arrive. Today was probably my most daylight-free day of the winter so far. The one consolation – I will have no more Monday mornings like this for months now.
At least, after the crappy event of yesterday (the loss of my personal diary), and the tiring nature of this passage of time – which I’m only halfway through – today had the decency to be a truly glorious day. Even Oxford Road looked spectacular on this last Monday morning of the teaching term. Note the large crowd in the background – the queue for the first graduation ceremony of the season.
This place is located near the Arbat in Moscow. I have eaten here once in the past and the food is very good, they do say that the Georgians do the best cuisine of all the former Soviet republics. What is more apparent about the place is the crazy nature of the building, it’s impossible to capture in one shot, really, but the fact that you enter it through a gigantic clay urn gives you some sense of what we’re talking about here. Inside it is full of bridges and little cubbyholes, it’s very surreal.
Last day in Moscow, and I won’t now be back until June. Unfortunately I have also to report the loss of my personal diary, the whole of 2012 disappeared last night somewhere in Domodedovo airport. I have kept a diary for 29 years now; but the year’s just gone. I have been trying to track it down, to see if anyone might have handed it in (as it can have no value to anyone else other than me – for whom it is irreplaceable), but no luck.
This has been going on down by the weir for a few weeks – work being done to install a water turbine to power the nearby shops in the old mill. A highly positive step that surely only the most reactionary old duffer could object to (but we have some of those, round here, believe me). The cloud on this shot has been caused a few seconds earlier by the guy in the yellow jacket wielding his angle-grinder.
Moscow again tomorrow… By the way, don’t ask me why I suddenly decided to start putting the day number at the top – but I have. So now you can see how long I have been going on this. (I retrospectively added the day number to earlier posts.)
Is there a voyeuristic aspect to this shot? I like the light, the pattern of the branches contrasted with the brick, the facelessness of it.
Back home. It was a beautiful, crisp winter’s day and I got some good pictures around lunchtime, one of which I was particularly keen on, but it was of waterfowl on the canal and I’ve done that theme rather a lot. This one was different – a family captured watching the ‘Valley of Lights’ parade through town tonight, a torchlit procession done to celebrate the turning on of the Christmas lights (at an acceptably late point in the year). A good evening.
This is one of those where I didn’t seek much photographic quality out of the daily pic, and instead just documented an interesting event. Well, I mean, it’s an everyday event, but look how low in the sky this sun is. And I’ve applied no filters or digital manipulation to this shot. This is really what high noon looks like in Bergen in late-November.
Ho hum. Not many Monday mornings to go, fortunately. Nice to see the Council are keeping the drains clear of fallen leaves, anyway.
